


Only Rain

by ConstanceComment



Series: Unreal Life [1]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Animal Death, Depression, Disabled Character, Dysfunctional Family, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5559784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gil decides to go to graduate school at Pan-Europa University. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if it didn't mean moving back in with his parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sapiens Sapiens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZJ_Timekeeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZJ_Timekeeper/gifts).



> [Here, have a soundtrack.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZkmOdoxWgg) 
> 
> Everything I write about a college inevitably ends up being set at a college that’s basically Rutgers, because that’s where I go to school, and I’ve got family ties there. And when it’s not Rutgers, it’s William & Mary, for similar reasons. Which means that either way, this fictional European university most likely doesn’t look anything like a European university.
> 
> Written for ZJTimekeeper as part of the 2015 Girl Genius Yuletide Spark-Exchange over on tumblr. I'm sorry this is a late, there was a family emergency, which has since been resolved.
> 
> This has been split into chapters due to length.
> 
> See the end for warnings, and scientific notes.

Gil grew up hearing about Pan-Europa University. It’s a noisy giant of a college in what would otherwise have been a quiet little town, cobblestone walkways between most of the buildings, a deep grounding in basically every kind of engineering, and a history that supposedly stretched back to Charlemagne. Gil’s father attended; it was something of an institution.

Gil had never seriously considered going. When he was finishing his primary education, the thought didn’t even occur to him, except as a series of vague negatives; his father worked there, after all. Going to school at Pan-Europa, Gil might as well live at home and commute. Hell, the argument could’ve been made that commuting _with his father_ would save on gas money. Not that the family really _needed_ to save on gas money, but still, no.

So Gil went to school in Paris, instead.

All things considered, the experience proves positive. Gil picks up two bachelor's degrees, one in biology and the other in engineering with a specialization in aeronautics, or he will once the term ends. He makes friends. He explores western Europe on his time off, and starts picking up new languages.

It’s been strange, being without his family. Gil acknowledges that this has been good for him, hell, that’s half the reason Gil decided to go to university on the other side of the continent in the first place. But that hasn’t stopped Gil from missing his twin sister, his mother. Zoing, the family dog. And, yes, Gil has missed his father, in the same way that Gil supposes he’s missed the steady sight of the Carpathians looming over his hometown.

But it’s one thing to think, _yes, it would be good to see my family again for an extended period of time_ and another thing completely to apply to Pan-Europa as if Gil’s father hadn’t risen from dean of the neuroscience department to dean of the college within the last few years.

Now, Gil’s left with the letter of acceptance in his hands, and a decision to make. Wooster looking at him from across the kitchen table, _judging him_ , isn’t making it any easier, either.

“You know,” Colette says helpfully, from the couch Gil picked up last year at a flea market, “this doesn’t mean you have to move in with your family.”

“Yeah,” Gil says, throwing the letter on the kitchen table. “Yeah, I know.”

“I mean,” she continues, “I’m here with the both of you instead of holed up on some family property—”

“I just—” Gil starts. “I wanted—” he’s not sure what, exactly, the end of that sentence was supposed to be.

Wooster, unhelpfully, says nothing, and moves the acceptance letter a few inches to his right so he can put his laptop on the crowded table. Gil can still feel Wooster judging him. It’s an infuriatingly English mannerism. Gil still can’t figure out quite how he manages it, sneering without actually moving any of the muscles in his face. It’s like the psychic projection of his disapproval, and if that were actually true, it’s something Gil’s father would want to pin down and study.

A thought that’s certainly not helping him.

“Look,” Colette says, sprawling out a little more on the couch, kicking her legs up on the arm, “you don’t have to make a decision right away. It’s not like you did early admissions, and you applied to all those other places, too. Just wait and see,” she advises him. “Worry about surviving finals, first.”

“And your senior thesis,” Wooster adds dryly.

Gil groans, and drops his forehead into the scarred, plasticy surface of the kitchen table. “I already got the prototype working,” he complains. “Why the hell do I have to go write about it, now?”

“That’s a question you maybe should’ve asked yourself before you decided to go to to graduate school,” Wooster says. “I’m fairly certain that academia is almost entirely explaining what you do to other people.”

“I know that,” Gil says. “I just— why a _thesis_?”

“Because the god who watches over you is cruel and fickle,” Colette tells him. “And because true science demands sacrifice, or something.”

“Right,” Gil says, hoping the sarcasm isn’t lost in the table. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she tells him, and Gil can hear Wooster’s keyboard clacking from across the table.

Even that sounds judgmental.

* * *

Gil goes home for the summer. It’s— it’s an odd thing, going home. It’s good; Gil can’t deny that it’s good, he _wanted_ this.

It’s just— he can’t stay in the house, that long. Gil’s parents sold his childhood home years ago, after Gil moved out and Zeetha started traveling. The new house is smaller, which makes sense. Cozy, his father called it. Intimate, his mother said, and if Gil weren’t already used to her, that might have been startling. As it is, he just quickly becomes claustrophobic.

The air is wet with spring, here. Mist hangs over the town in great clouds, skimming the ground in the early mornings. Gil goes running with the dawn, and watches the sun burn through the air, searing the barriers off the world.

It feels good, to be active. Running reminds his limbs how they’re supposed to move, and his mother’s always been a health nut; Gil knows it makes her happy to see him come home in the mornings and keep her company while she yells at the politicians on television.

Gil missed her. In an hour or so, she’ll be going to work as a government translator, but for now, his mother sits there and yells, in her fuzzy slippers and her bright green hair, bedraggled and disgruntled and still very much Gil’s mother. Gil sits down on the couch, and she draws him into the argument seamlessly, nevermind she’s only been having it with herself.

They’re going back and forth about the recently instituted corn subsidies when Gil’s father makes it downstairs.

“He’s only been back a _day_ , Zanta,” his father says, bending down to kiss her hair.

“This is as good a time as any to make sure they’re not filling his head with bizarre autocratic concepts over there in France,” Gil’s mother says.

Gil’s father is already dressed for the day. Gil doesn’t think he’s ever known him not to dress immaculately, when working, or about to work. The only thing out of place in the suit ensemble is his tie; bright purple and patterned with gold stars, Gil vaguely remembers picking it out with Zeetha as a long-ago father’s day gift.

“Mostly, they’re just filling it with French,” Gil offers.

“That’s just as bad,” Gil’s mother grumbles. “ _French_. Not a useful language, like classical Arabic.”

“A lot of people speak French,” Gil’s father points out. The rebuttal sounds as well-worn as the statement that preceded it. “It’s practically an international language.”

Gil’s mother hisses through her teeth. “It’s ugly, is what it is. Like English.”

All Gil can think of are Colette and Wooster, the horrified expressions they’d likely wear to be told their languages (and by the transitive property, they themselves) were _anything_ alike.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet?” Gil’s father asks him.

Gil shrugs. “I figured I’d pick something up in town.”

“Mm,” Gil’s father hums. “Just make sure you eat something.”

“Have you been getting enough protein, over there?” His mother asks, turning her lazer focus back to Gil. “You’ve gotten so skinny. I worry about you, you know. Trying to subsist on cheap noodles and instant meals.”

“I eat enough,” Gil says, and the argument carries them for the rest of the morning. It’s good, he tells himself, and bundles his family’s presence into something he can keep for later.

* * *

Zeetha comes to visit in the middle of the summer.

Gold skin has tanned even darker, since Gil saw her last. She’s strong, toned-looking, which means she hasn’t let their mother’s ideas of fitness down, either. Something inside of Gil makes room for her, the part of him that’s always been a twin.

The minute she sees Gil, she breaks into a run, and it’s all Gil can do to remain standing when she flings herself at him.

“Little brother!” She shouts, directly into his ear.

“We’re _twins_!” Gil protests.

“And I’m the older one!” She spits back, unconcerned, the argument nearly as old as they are.

“By five whole minutes,” Gil grumbles, but he can’t help the way he’s grinning.

“Still counts,” Zeetha says cheerfully,

Later that night, Gil tells her about his grad school plans. Transylvania Polygnostic would love to have a legacy return, and the Tower would be happy to see Gil come back to finish his tertiary studies, but the letter from Pan-Europa still burns a hole in his luggage.

“Do you really want to do that, though?” Zeetha asks him. “Stay here, I mean?”

They’ve snuck up onto the roof, the way they used to as children. The shingles dig into Gil’s skin, but he can see a fair portion of the town from here, all lit by streetlights, stretching out before them until other houses block the view. Gil and Zeetha used to come up here all the time, whenever anything was wrong, or just because they could. The two of them are probably too old for this, now that they’re twenty-one. It still feels like the right place to talk about things.

“What’s so bad about here?” Gil asks her.

Next to him, Zeetha sighs, and pulls her legs in close to her body, resting her chin on one of her knees. “You know why I left, right?” She asks him instead.

“You wanted to see the world,” Gil says. “At least, that’s what you told people when you didn’t just say you ran off to join the circus.”

They used to joke about it, as kids, but Zeetha was the one who actually _did it_. They graduated, right out of high school, shiny college acceptances in their mailboxes, and Zeetha just smiled at her family, and took off that night.

She didn’t resurface until she was already hired, and there wasn’t much that anyone could do about it. Their mother had wept and railed, but it was their father who didn’t even seem to care that she had gone, stone-faced and quiet. Gil had already accepted the offer from the Tower, by that point. When he left, he left their parents alone.

Every time Zeetha comes home, now, the house is filled with brittle silences, an awkward distance with no one but Gil left to reach across the gap.

It’s been hard not to be bitter, these last years. Gil hasn’t always succeeded at that.

Zeetha shakes her head, a minute little movement that shakes the fringes of her bright hair. “Nah,” she says. “I mean, _yeah_ , I wanted to travel, I wanted to _see things_ , but—”

“But what?”

Zeetha shrugs, the light from the street reflecting into the lines of her frown. “It’s so _small_ ,” she says, and— “I wanted better for me, than to be here forever. I figured you would’ve wanted it too.”

“This _is_ more,” Gil tells her. “Teaching— being at the front of the curve on this sort of research—”

“You can do that in a corporate lab, Gil,” Zeetha stresses. “You wanted to build planes since you were _eight_ , you don’t have to stay here and be beholden to them because you think it’s the right thing to do, or whatever—”

“I want to teach,” Gil says quietly. “I can’t do that in a lab. And I can’t— I want to build what _I_ want, Zee, not whatever some employers wants out of me.”

“What about the military?” Zeetha presses him.

“And follow mom?” Gil shakes his head. “Mom’s a linguist, she helps diplomats, mostly. Anything I build, for them— I don’t want anyone to use my designs to _kill_ people. I just— I want to make something for _me_.”

“So, what, you’re following dad instead?” Zeetha asks. “Because yeah, sure, _that’s_ what’s going to make you happy.”

“It’s not your decision,” Gil snaps. “And you don’t know a _damn thing_ about what’s going to make me happy—” Gil swallows. He didn’t come up here to fight with his sister.

For a minute, everything is silent in the wake of the things Gil can’t unsay. Thunder rumbles up on the mountain, the night and the air hanging heavily on the town, pooling on the eaves and collecting under the sidewalks.

“Don’t do it, Gil,” Zeetha tells him quietly. “Stay in academia if you want, fine. Just— don’t do it at home, okay? You don’t need to do that to yourself.”

Gil scrubs a hand over his face. “I’ll think about it,” he says.

* * *

The problem is— usually it’s whenever people tell him _no_ that Gil tends to do the exact opposite of whatever he’d started off wanting to get done.

He accepts the offer from Pan-Europa, and tells his mother first, who is, quite frankly, overjoyed.

“At least one of you will be staying close,” she says, and hugs Gil again, her grip spine-shatteringly strong. “I’m so proud,” she says, and warmth fills him.

As for Gil’s father— he’s always been harder to understand. But Gil sees the hint of a smile on his face. It’s enough.

He can make that enough.

* * *

Gil’s father drives him to school. Gil predicted this; he definitely knew it was coming.

It still makes him feel like a child again, and not exactly in a good way. On the way out of the house, he almost checks for a bagged lunch on the counter, like it would be right there next to Zeetha’s. He feels like he’s walked through time, and Gil isn’t sure where he’s landed.

The car is quiet, and awkward. Gil folds himself into the passenger seat, and after a moment, remembers to put on his seatbelt, because he can feel his father eyeing him with disapproval already.

“Are you excited for your classes?” Gil’s father asks him.

“Yeah,” Gil says. “Dr. Sun has a great research background, and I’m happy to start work with him.”

Gil’s father smiles slightly. “Sun’s a good man, and a friend,” he says. “He only accepts the best—I expect you to work hard, to be worthy of the position he’s offered you.”

Gil nods. ‘Work hard,’ is probably Gil’s father’s motto. It’s either that, or ‘don’t make me come over there,’ from how frequently Gil’s heard both phrases during his lifetime. Gil doesn’t mind, that much. He’s never had a problem with working for what he wants.

Then he realizes—

“Father,” he starts, “did you— did you get the TA position with Dr. Sun _for_ me?”

Gil’s father waves a hand, unconcerned. “You’ll work hard,” he says, and the conversation’s over, it’s clear, from the way he turns back to the road.

But all Gil can think of is that this is just another test, just another thing he didn’t earn, with everyone waiting to see if Gil will fail.

The summer Gil and Zeetha turned sixteen, their father got got them both jobs, and told them they would work. Nevermind that Zeetha already _had_ a job at a local dojo, or that Gil had wanted to go spend the summer with Theo— they had jobs, now, and hell or high water Gil’s father was going to see that they did them.

This feels similar, down the Zeetha’s voice in the back of Gi’s head, _railing_. But it’s not like there’s anything Gil can do about it, other than turn the offer down. And he knows that this is an opportunity, even if he didn’t come by it honestly, or by merit.

* * *

Gil walks into a graduate mechanical engineering seminar with Professor Donowitz on Tuesday, and right there in left-center of the room, is Tarvek Sturmvoraus.

Gil blinks.

Tarvek notices him, and blinks too, something flashing in his eyes that Gil can’t identify from this far away.

They haven’t seen each other in two years.

Gil takes a seat in the center-left of the room, about six rows down from Tarvek. When he stands up at the end of the lecture to leave, Tarvek is already gone.

* * *

About a week into the semester, Gil and his father have run out of things to say to each other.

The silence in the car goes from natural to awkward to heavy, weighing down and pushing out at the glass. It makes Gil feel ungrateful, but it’s not like his father starts anything, either.

To be honest, it’s always been like this. Gil just— he _forgets_ , when he’s away, how much it feels like his family doesn’t know him.

* * *

Gil starts lab work at the end of September. Dr. Vapnoople is has been taking it slow with the rest of Gil’s class, in terms of academic rigor, but now he’s done fooling around. Gil needs 10 hours of lab work _per week_ , which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that Gil’s father leaves work at four every day, and the labs are most often available at night.

While he’s trying to figure out a solution, Gil starts reserving lab time in long blocks during the middle of the day, trying to fit as much of his lab time as he can in between his classes. He succeeds in snagging a Wednesday slot in the early afternoon, and sets out for the labs on the south end of campus.

There’s a girl sitting at the desk at the lobby of the biology labs. She’s reading something; some kind of novel, when Gil walks in after class.

A little bell jingles as the door opens, and her blonde head pops up, fixing Gil with a very green stare not diluted by her glasses.

“ID,” she demands, and Gil fumbles for it, digging it out of his pocket.

Her eyebrow raises when she sees the name on the card, and Gil cringes inside, because this sort of things has been happening _all month_. People see the ID card, or a professor calls him by his last name, and heads turn all over campus because Gil’s father has made a professional _career_ out of being obstinate in such a way that his name is all over the school’s interdepartmental politics. People find out Gil’s name, and they turn their heads, either suck up or back off, and—

“Do you have an appointment to use one of the labs?” The girl asks briskly, snapping Gil out of his thoughts.

“Uh,” Gil fumbles.

“Because,” she says, all business, even in her overalls and her rolled-up sleeves, “you need an appointment to use the labs.”

“Right,” Gil starts, blinking, brain coming back online again after the falter. “Yeah, I’m booked for lab six?”

“How long?” She asks.

“Um, three hours, I think,” Gil says.

The girl raises an eyebrow at him. “You think?”

“I know,” Gil says firmly.

“Well you’re going to have to wait,” the girl tells him. “Someone else is using the lab, and they won’t be done for another hour.”

Gil shrugs. “I can wait.”

“That’s good,” the girl says, settling back into her chair. “Because you’re going to have to.”

Still a bit stunned, Gil takes on the floor, up against the wall to the left of the desk. The girl watches him out of the corner of her eye while Gil pulls his laptop out, plugs it into the wall socket.

“What are you working on?” She asks Gil.

“Right now, or in the lab?” Gil asks her.

“Right now, I guess. Either one. Whichever one you’d rather talk about.”

“Well,” Gil starts, “right now I’m mostly working on some biomedical research.”

“Yeah?” The girl raises an eyebrow again. “Like what?”

“Skin grafts, mostly. It’d be cool to do work with stem cells someday, but I’m not exactly there yet. What’s your name?” Gil asks her.

“It’s Agatha,” she tells him. “Agatha Clay. And it’s nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” Gil says, and smiles. “It’s nice to meet you too. I’m Gil.”

“I know,” Agatha says, “I read it off your card.”

She’s still smiling, and goes back to reading her novel, the corners of her mouth turned up.

* * *

Living at home starts to chafe.

Zeetha took off at the end of July, not wanting to linger in town, the summer being the best time of year for the circus she’s _still_ travelling with. Gil and his parents wished her well, but the house still feels _empty_ without her there, as if Zeetha left Gil on his own, _again_.

Gil goes running every morning, eats breakfast with his mother, and rides with his father to the university. Conversations are stilted; Gil’s not entirely sure, anymore, how to fit into sync with his family. Which is hard, because he knows his mother is trying to fold him back in, smiles at him like she’s afraid Gil is going to leave again, like his sister.

It’s like living underwater. The mist hangs thick on the town as the weather cools, autumn making itself known as the the late summer storms roll down off the mountain. Everyone in the house is waiting for the other shoe to drop, Gil included.

In the meantime, Gil goes to class, and teaches classes, which he likes even better than he’d expected. Right now, the biology department has Gil working an introductory lecture, and the engineering department has him teaching a different introductory lecture. It’s good work, difficult, but good.

Most of the people in Gil’s classes are freshmen, there to fill requirements. As such, a lot of them don’t care, that much, about what they’re studying, but there are the few who obviously _do_ that make the hours worthwhile. Teaching reminds Gil that what’s basic to him is basic for a _reason_ ; these are the building blocks of his fields, and maybe it’s simplistic, but it’s still important.

There’s something fulfilling in being able to explain things to other people. Science isn’t, _shouldn’t be_ some inaccessible, impenetrable field of study. It frustrates him when people in his class don’t seem to understand what Gil is trying to teach them. It makes Gil feel like he’s _failed_ , somehow, someone who was relying on him. In a way, he has.

Gil thinks about calling Colette to complain to her about it, but he doesn’t want to bother her. She’s in the first month of her senior year, back at the Tower; Gil shouldn’t have to rely on his friends for stability or reassurance.

It’s good, he tells himself, sitting in strained silence with his father in the car, listening as his mother complains about her work and the way the whole continent’s going downhill, these days, with the way everyone’s getting scared and giving in to barely veiled fascism. Life is good. It’s good.

* * *

Gil doesn’t intend to, but he ends up looking for Tarvek every time he goes to Professor Donowitz' mechanical engineering lecture. Tarvek’s surprisingly quiet whenever the professor turns things over to the floor; Gil remembers from Paris that Tarvek was always quick to try and prove him wrong whenever there was an audience present. Now, he’s just silent.

Tarvek disappeared, suddenly, in the middle of their junior year at the Tower. At least, Gil thinks it was the middle of the year; he didn’t quite notice, the exact moment Tarvek stopped showing up to classes. It was just nice to live in a world where Tarvek wasn’t constantly hassling him, even if it felt— _quieter_ , somehow, like silence that echoed off the Carpathians as the summer storms ended.

Now, Tarvek’s here, somehow, and that silence rings out, still, despite his presence. It makes Gil’s skin itch.

Tarvek’s presence is a mystery. Gil honestly hadn’t figured Tarvek for a graduate degree. He would’ve thought that Tarvek would’ve been the sort of guy to enter the political world directly; he was _triple majoring_ , back at the Tower. Colette eventually offered that the stress must’ve gotten to Tarvek, once it was clear that he wasn’t going to come back. Gil never quite believed that theory, but seeing Tarvek now, even more pinch-faced than normal, and eerily silent—

There’s a part of Gil that wants to provoke him into a fight, just to see Tarvek react. There’s another part of him (smaller, older) that just wants to know what’s wrong.

* * *

Agatha turns out to be working the desk at the biology lab four times a week. Gil keeps coming early for his lab time, partly because he has nowhere else to go for that half hour, and partly because Agatha turns out to be one of the most genuinely interesting people Gil’s ever met. It’s a good way to spend the time, grading (endlessly grading) and talking to Agatha.

“I’m on work study,” Agatha explains, spreading her homework out over the lobby desk. “I just wish they’d let me out from behind the desk.”

“You’re into biology?” Gil asks her.

Agatha shakes her head, her lower lip in between her teeth as she focuses on her work. “No,” she says after a moment. “I mean, there’s nothing _wrong_ with it,” she adds hastily, looking at Gil out of the corner of her eye. “I just prefer mechanics to organics.”

“No worries,” Gil tells her, “I’m a fan of both. My other degree is in engineering.”

“You’re a graduate student?” Agatha asks him, pen stilling over the page.

Gil winces. Great, now he seems like a creep, associating with the _vulnerable undergrads_. “Yeah, I just started here.”

Agatha shakes her head slightly, as if to clear it. “That’s fine,” she assures him. “I should’ve known, anyway; not a lot of undergrads book the labs this long. Or if they do, I haven’t seen it.”

“But you still want to do lab work,” Gil presses her.

“Badly,” Agatha tells him. “Really badly. I transferred here because of the lab infrastructure, you know?”

“You’re a transfer?” Gil asks her.

Agatha nods, shallowly this time, worrying her lip again. “Yeah, in my second year,” she says. “TPU.”

“TPU’s a good school,” Gil says. “Why leave?”

Agatha is quiet, for a moment. Her pen hovers again, before the end starts tapping rhythmically against the pages of her textbook. “It wasn’t the right fit for me,” she says, and Gil knows there has to be more of a story than that from the way she says it, but it’s not his place to pry.

Agatha’s the only friend he’s made here, so far. Gil doesn’t want to lose that.

* * *

The underwater feeling gets worse. Gil feels himself sinking, filled with immeasurable weight. He reminds himself he likes teaching, that he wanted to come home. Zoing whines when Gil stares at his papers too long, low and sad, placing big, mutt pawns on Gil’s leg in attempt after attempt to get Gil to pay attention, or leave the place in his head that’s nothing but radio snow.

Gil can tell that his parents are worrying about him, and he wants to tell them that he’s fine, but he knows that the both of them are smart and paranoid enough to take that as a confirmation that something is actually wrong.

Gil knows that his father really only has two modes of parental interaction; hands-free, or helicopter. His mother works so hard, and tries so much, to keep Gil close, happy. He doesn’t want to stress her out any further. This is his problem, not his parents’.

But Gil can’t leave things like this. If only because commuting is making it nearly impossible for Gil to get all of his lab work done, now that other classes are starting to require it as well. Gil’s doing graduate work in order to conduct _research_ , and even if he’s really only assisting his professors with their research right now, it’s still important that Gil be reliable.

He starts looking for apartments, and tells himself he’s not betraying his family by moving one town away. He’ll still see them more frequently than he did in Paris, and much more often than when they sent him and Zeetha to boarding school. Gil can serve his own interests and still be a good son.

* * *

The apartment Gil finds is one of those multi-family affairs, ten blocks from the main campus, which is honestly a hell of a lot closer than Gil thought he was going to be able to find for this price. The owners are nice, and they show him the apartment he’ll be subletting, explaining that the roommate Gil will share with is in class, currently, and that Gil should probably meet him before he moves in.

The roommate’s bedroom is tidy, and neatly kept; there’s a bookshelf next to the dresser that’s overflowing with what looks like technical reading, political biographies, and a surprising amount of what looks like fantasy literature.

The room Gil is told he can rent is about the same size, but it looks all the bigger for being barren; there’s just a dresser and a bed, in there, and a window that faces the street, the distant Carpathians.

“I’ll take it,” Gil says, and the owner smiles at him, her face lighting up.

“He’s a nice boy,” she says, handing a piece of paper to Gil with his roommate’s contact information on it. “He was just having trouble paying the rent by himself, so we had to open the sublet out to a new person instead of leaving it empty.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to be prompt with the rent,” Gil tells her.

He doesn’t look down at the paper until he leaves the apartment, and once he’s on the street, it’s too late to go back inside. The paper in his hands lists an email address, a phone number, and the name Tarvek Sturmvoraus.

* * *

When Gil walks into his father’s office later that day, Bang’s got her feet up on the dean’s desk like she owns the place.

“Kid!” She greets him, and if Gil weren’t already used to the fact that she smiles like some kind of aquatic predator, he’d be unnerved by the way she lights up when he walks in. As it is, they’ve gotten into enough bar fights together that Gil’s pretty sure that they’re square.

“I thought you were in Paris,” Gil says.

Bang makes a dismissive motion with her hand, jumping up out of her seat. “Nah,” she says. “What’s in Paris? You’re here, your dad’s here; everyone I love to irritate is right here.”

“Oh yeah?” Gil asks, and wiggles his eyebrows at her. “What about my sister?”

Bang’s smile immediately warps into a frown. “Man, fuck her. She’s off in like, Istanbul, still with that defense contractor guy.”

“She’s in Istanbul?” Gil asks.

“According to the circus’ facebook page, she is,” Bang shrugs. “Anyway. The hell are you doing here?”

“Getting my education,” Gil deadpans.

Bang socks him in the ribs. “Nice fucking try. I mean, what are you doing in your dad’s office? You two get along like wet cats in a sack. Or something else more awkward, yet hysterical to watch.”

“Well,” Gil says, “I’ve decided I should probably move out—” and that’s about as far as he gets before Bang shrieks, and spins around so she can grab Gil by the shoulders.

“You’re growing a spine!” She screeches. “I _knew_ you had it in you, junior!”

Gil rolls his eyes. “It’s just getting inconvenient to be at home when the best blocks of lab time are all at night. I’m falling behind like this.”

“So why not get a car?” Bang asks him. “Like, if that was seriously the problem, I’m pretty sure your family’s garage can manage a third car.”

Gil stops short. “Because—”

Okay, he didn’t actually think about that.

Bang laughs at him again, cackling. “You here to tell daddy dearest about your impending move?” She asks.

“Yeah,” Gil says. “Want to watch?”

Bang rubs her hands together. “If you thought I wouldn’t just listen through the door, you’ve got another thing coming.”

* * *

Talking to Gil’s father about the move goes about as well as he expects it to.

Bang sits in the corner and watches with shrewd eyes, and an expression that broadcasts just how badly she wishes she had popcorn. Gil’s father sits behind his desk, having kicked Bang out of his spot, and grades papers. He’s got a tie on that Zeetha picked out for him, years ago. Little ducks on a powder-blue background with bubbles in between, for a bathtime theme.

And Gil stands there like he’s facing a firing squad, and not his own father.

“I’m moving out,” he announces.

“No you’re not,” his father says. He doesn’t even look up from the papers he’s grading.

“I’ve found an apartment,” Gil continues. “It’s got a good rate for rent, and it’s close to the school.”

“Why would you even need to move out?” His father asks.

“I need the lab time,” Gil says. _And living at home is killing me slowly_ , he thinks, but does not say.

Gil’s father waves a hand dismissively. “If that’s a problem, I can reserve a lab for you.”

“Like you told Dr. Sun to pick me for his teacher’s assistant?” Gil asks.

Gil’s father nods. “It’s not a problem.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Gil says.

“Well,” Gil’s father says, “it’s a good thing then that life hasn’t got a thing to do with what you’d rather.”

Gil’s hands clench at his side. “My life,” Gil asks, “or the life you want me to live?”

For a second, it’s quiet enough in the office that Gil could hear a pin drop as his father looks up to meet his eye. Then, very quietly behind him, he hears Bang go: “Oh shit.”

Gil can understand the sentiment.

“I don’t exactly see the difference you’re insisting on, Gilgamesh,” his father tells him.

“I know,” Gil says. “That’s the problem.”

“All I want is what’s best for you,” his father says.

Gil shakes his head. “You want what _you_ think is best for me,” he corrects him. “Which is why, I guess, it’s a good thing that my life hasn’t got a thing to do with what you want.”

“You don’t get to speak to me like that,” Gil’s father says lowly.

“And you don’t get to treat me like a puppet,” Gil fires back. “I don’t belong to you. I never have.”

“I’m paying for your education,” Gil’s father reminds him.

“I never asked for that,” Gil says. His chest hurts, something thick and old curled up in there, that sounds like the door opening the morning Zeetha slipped away. “I never asked for any of the things you just _decided_ for me.”

“Why come back?” His father asks, changing tracks. “If you were only going to leave, then why bother coming back at all? At least your sister has the sense to stay away.”

“Because I wanted to see if you’d changed,” Gil admits softly.

His father doesn’t have anything to say to that.

Bang follows Gil when he leaves. As soon as he makes it out of the building, he starts to shake, and Bang offers him an arm, and says nothing at all.


	2. Cervus Elaphus

Gil corners Tarvek in class the next day.

For the first time, Gil makes sure to sit at least two rows behind Tarvek, and sits on the edge of the aisle, ready to pounce once the lecture ends. Gil knows that if he doesn’t watch, Tarvek’s going to slip out on him, because Tarvek’s a lot of things and ‘sneaky’ is probably the biggest item on the list, with ‘conflict avoidant’ probably somewhere else farther down. Gil’s pretty sure if he left things like this, Tarvek would keep ignoring Gil until _even after_ he moves in, and that’d probably be even shittier than Gil’s current living situation.

Unfortunately, watching Tarvek means that Gil ends up paying barely any attention at all to Professor Donowitz’s lecture. By the time class ends, Gil doesn’t think he’s absorbed a single piece of information since he sat down. Once Tarvek stands up, Gil does the same, waiting at the top of the lecture hall stairs, waiting for Tarvek to walk by.

When Tarvek gets there, he’s already frowning, and ducks his head, trying to get past Gil without eye contact.

“Hey,” Gil says, “long time no see,” and Tarvek’s back stiffens like someone’s physically shocked him as he squares up and looks Gil in the eye.

“Is there something you want?” Tarvek asks. It’s a perfectly genteel statement, as if he weren’t radiating a hostility that Gil can probably only detect from Tarvek because of how damn _familiar_ it is.

“Just wanted to know if your landlady told you,” Gil shrugs.

“Told me what?”

“About the spare room across from yours,” Gil explains. “I’m moving in on Thursday.”

For a moment, Tarvek just looks at him. “Why?” Tarvek asks eventually.

Gil shrugs. “Because it’d be shitty to move in and not tell you? And I wasn’t sure you’d open an email if you saw my name on it.”

“Why my apartment building?” Tarvek cracks out, each word sharp as cold steel.

Gil shrugs again. “It’s a good location, and a good price,” he says. “Best I could do on short notice.”

“Fuck you,” Tarvek says, quiet, like the curse most people don’t use swearing for. “Of course you pick the one place I went so no one would follow me. And of _course_ you’re going to use my finances against me.”

“What?” Gil asks, thrown.

Tarvek ignores the question. “If you get me expelled again, they’ll never find the body,” he promises instead, and his voice is so cold, but so brittle, thin like ice with dark waters underneath it. “This is my last shot, and _you are not fucking it up for me_ , do you understand?”

“If you’re going to fuck up, that’ll be on you,” Gil fires back, but he’s still unstable, thrown by what Tarvek has just revealed.

Tarvek breathes in through his nose, and breaks the stare. “I’ll see you when you move in, then,” Tarvek says, and heads out of the room before Gil can even regroup. “Have a good fucking week.”

* * *

Gil goes home that night, and realizes that maybe he should’ve looked Tarvek up, when he disappeared the last time.

The first google search unearths a trove of things that Gil never wanted to know.

 _“STURMVORAUS PATRIARCH INDICTED FOR CHILD ABUSE AND ATTEMPTED MURDER!”_ The headlines read. _“DESCENDANTS OF ROYALTY ROYALLY SCREWED BY ASSET SEIZURE! DETAILS OF THE CONSPIRACY ON PAGE A4!”_

 _“Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus,”_ the inside continues, _“age 53, was arrested last Tuesday for the attempted murder of his daughter Anevka, when his son Tarvek returned home for winter break and found his sister paralyzed—”_

Gil closes the window, and feels sick.

He’d suspected, as a kid, and never really thought about it. Tarvek used to cry, at night, when they were at boarding school together. He was timid, when Gil met him, nevermind that he _wanted_ with a hunger Gil had never seen before. But Tarvek asked him not to tell anyone, and Gil never did, because they were _eight_ , and Tarvek was his _best friend_ , and then Gil’s father, who _sent him away_ from his family and didn’t want him asked Gil for _one thing—_

Gil sent Tarvek back into that nightmare. And then he wondered, back in Paris, why his old friend hated him.

Gil makes it to the bathroom before he throws up, but only barely.

* * *

“Hey,” Gil asks Agatha the next day. “I’ve got a question.”

“Hit me,” Agatha offers.

“Why’d you pick TPU in the first place, if you like our lab infrastructure better?” Gil asks. “TPU is _huge_ on the hands-on thing; Dr. Beetle basically made it his _thing_ when he became President of the college.”

At the desk, Agatha stiffens for a second, before she deflates. “It was close to home,” Agatha says. “I grew up right there in the town.”

“Huh,” Gil says.

“What?” Agatha asks him.

“Nothing, it’s just— I grew up one town over from here,” Gil tells her. “I guess we have something more in common than just engineering,” he says, and when he smiles at her, Agatha smiles back in a way that makes Gil’s chest loosen, a little.

“I dunno,” Agatha teases, “I think we both have some pretty messy hair.”

Gil snorts. “You should see my sister. Hers is _green_.”

Agatha laughs. “You’re kidding.”

Gil shakes his head. “Nope. Bright green. Her and my mom. Zeetha started dying hers acid green when we were in middle school, and mom went along with because I wasn’t going to do it, and Zeetha didn’t want to do it alone. And then the both of them decided they just liked it _better_ that way, and never stopped.”

“Well, that’s something else we have in common, then,” Agatha tells him. “I’ve got a younger sister, too. Her name’s Max. She’s two.”

“I bet she’s adorable,” Gil says. “And my sister would argue that, technically speaking, _I’m_ the younger one; we’re twins, but she was born first.”

“What’s that like?” Agatha asks him. “Being a twin.”

“It’s supposed to mean someone who doesn’t leave you alone, but really it just means that she’s got all the good blackmail material,” Gil explains, and Agatha laughs again.

* * *

Bang helps Gil move. She’s one of the few people he knows in this town, and she owns a car too, which puts her at the top of his list. Gil’s mother offered to help, but it feels _wrong_ , somehow, to ask her to help Gil leave her behind, even as he tells himself, again, again, that he’s not abandoning his mother, that he’s close enough that he can see her whenever she likes—

“You sure don’t have a lot of shit,” Bang tells him blithely.

Gil shrugs under the two boxes he’s carrying. “Never saw the need to own a lot of stuff,” he explains.

Bang gasps, pretending (Gil thinks) to be scandalized. “But having stuff is the best part of being alive!” Bang exclaims. “You have stuff, you do a job to get _more_ stuff, and then pay for a bigger house to keep all the stuff in—”

“Not everyone’s as materially minded as you, Bang,” Gil tells her.

“Well they should be,” Bang grumps. “We’d have more wars, that way.”

Gil shakes his head. “You’re despicable, you know that?”

Bang preens, and throws the box of Gil’s belonging on his bed without ceremony. “Aw, thank you.”

Gil rolls his eyes, and Bang jabs an elbow into his ribs on her way past him to get out the door, and bring more things in from the car.

It’s good, Gil promises himself. It can be good.

* * *

Living with Tarvek is strange. When Gil wakes up in the morning, his door is shut, with Tarvek presumably asleep still. And every day, when Gil gets back from his run, Tarvek is gone. At night, Gil spends most of his time in his room, and Tarvek must do the same, because Gil hadly sees him at all, and would have barely any proof of their cohabitation were it not for the fact that Tarvek puts sticky notes on all the food in the fridge that Gil didn’t buy.

Gil calls Zeetha on the third night after he moves in.

Zeetha picks up on the second ring. “Yo,” she says. “What’s up, baby bro?”

“I moved out,” Gil says shortly.

On the other end of the line, he can hear street noise, and Zeetha being very quiet, very still.

“Are you sure about that?” She asks.

“What?” Gil snaps. “You want me to move, you don’t want me to move—”

“It’s just— I’m proud of you,” Zeetha says. “It’s about time you started taking care of yourself, instead of everyone else, you know? I’m proud of you.”

* * *

When Gil walks into the lab that Wednesday, he tells Agatha that he’s moved.

“So I’m going to be moving my lab times, too,” Gil explains. “I mean, I’m definitely still going to come by on Wednesdays,” he hastens to explain as Agatha’s face falls, “but now I can actually get time in the mechanical labs, too.”

“That’s good!” Agatha enthuses. “Good for you, then. Actually,” she says, “if you’re getting time in the mechanical labs, would you mind if I swung by, at some point? I have some stuff I need to get arc welded, and all the safety standards around here are so uptight about needing a certified spotter.”

“Yeah,” Gil says, “sure, I’d— I’d love to help,” Gil says, adding, even as he kicks himself internally; “it’s a date.”

At least, Gil consoles himself as he buries his face back into his paperwork, he wasn’t the only one who turned red as a tomato.

* * *

Helping Agatha with her project isn’t hard. She already has the majority of the technical skills she needs; Gil turns out to really only be useful as someone who can lift sheet metal by himself.

Agatha smiles at Gil, and pushes her hair behind her ears. “Thanks for the assist,” she says, and Gil can’t help the way his chest stutters, how much harder it feels to breathe just because she’s smiling at him.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling dazed, “no problem.”

Agatha blushes, red racing up the side of her neck in splotches.

Gil makes it back to the apartment in a haze, and Tarvek looks up when he comes in, frowning at Gil’s grin.

“What now?” He asks, and Gil can’t tell if that’s concern, or not.

“I had a good day,” Gil tells him. This is the first time since he moved in that he’s caught Tarvek in the living room, and probably the first conversation they’ve actually had since the disaster in the lecture hall.

And Tarvek says, _“novel,”_ and rolls his eyes, derisive, but it _is_ , Gil thinks. It really is.

* * *

Time passes through Gil’s hands like water through a sieve, and slowly, Gil feels himself breaking the surface. The work is hard, and every single one of Gil’s professors drives him like they’re going to kill him before they relent. But it’s worth it. Winter sneaks up on the town with a thickening of the weather patterns, the rain coming more frequently and more chilled, hard winds driving sheets of sleet into the buildings and icing the sidewalk.

On one of the few clear days they’ve had in a few weeks, Gil gets ambushed in the park by Theopholous DuMedd.

“Gil!” Theo shouts, and slings an arm over Gil’s shoulder as if the last time they saw each other was yesterday instead of when they were nineteen.

“Hey, Theo,” Gil greets him, and allows himself to be led into a café by one of his oldest and estranged friends.

“So,” Theo eventually says, a hot cup in his hands and a scone on his plate, “where the actual fuck have you been?”

“In Paris,” Gil says.

“Bullshit you were in Paris,” Theo counters. “You could’ve gone to Cambridge, and you’re telling me you picked Paris, and then _dropped off the face of the planet_? You owe me an explanation, my friend.”

Gil winces. “There wasn’t much to say,” he says. “I guess we just lost track of each other. I sent you a letter,” he offers feebly. “It was a postcard; had the Eiffel Tower on it. You never got back to me.”

Theo frowns. “What postcard?” He asks. “I didn’t get any postcard.”

“No?” Gil asks, stomach sinking. “I put it in the stack with the rest of my family’s letters, right before I left for college—”

“Nope,” Theo says, confirming Gil’s worst suspicions. “No letter. But it’s whatever; I missed you, Gil. Everyone did, after we graduated.”

“How’d you even find me?” Gil asks.

“Oh,” Theo says, lighting up. “My cousin told me about you. She can’t stop gushing about you, actually, it’s adorable.”

“I didn’t know you had a cousin,” Gil says.

Theo nods. “Yeah, it’s Agatha. Agatha Heterodyne? She’s a sweet girl. It’s a shame her parents are dicks, but she’s honestly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Hey,” Theo adds suddenly, “speaking of dicks, is your dad still controlling and crazy?”

“Yeah,” Gil says, slightly dazed, “no, yeah, that never stopped.”

“Shame,” Theo says, and sympathetically hands Gil a piece of his scone.

* * *

“Hey,” Gil tells Agatha the next day, “you didn’t tell me you were Theo’s cousin.” _Or a Heterodyne_ , Gil thinks internally, but even _he_ can learn when to keep his mouth shut.

At the workstation, Agatha freezes. “It’s not something I like to broadcast,” Agatha says slowly, firmly. “I mean, I love Theo, but his family’s not _my_ family. Not really. They lost that right when they sent me to live with my parents once the seizures got bad.”

“Why leave Beetleburg, then? It’s far enough away from Castle College that no one would try to connect you to your parents, if you kept going by Clay,” Gil asks her. He realizes it’s an invasive question the _second_ he gets it out of his mouth, but it’s not exactly like he can take them back. Gil can practically _feel_ Zeetha whacking him over the back of the head, all the same.

Agatha sighs, a great movement of wind from a bellows. “I told you I grew up in the area, right?” She asks, studiously not looking at Gil.

“Yeah,” Gil says. “I told you I grew up _here_ , right?”

Agatha nods, screwing a something into place. “Okay,” she says, “but you went to undergrad in Paris.”

Now it’s Gil’s turn to nod, even though he doesn’t think that was a question.

“Sometimes,” Agatha says, “you just really need to get away from the people who say they love you. That,” she adds, “and the fact that half the professors remember me as a stuttering _child_ , too young to let near the welding equipment as if my dad— Adam— wasn’t a blacksmith. Half the professors looked down on me, pitied me for being the disabled kid whose famous family couldn’t take care of her, and the rest—” Agatha huffs, frustrated, grabbing the blowtorch with a deft swipe. “The rest of them looked at me like everyone else did, like executive dysfunction and epilepsy made me too _stupid_ to be trusted with anything.”

Gil blinks. “But you’re _brilliant_ ,” he blurts, and Agatha laughs a little, her shoulders coming out of their defensive square.

“Yeah I am,” she says, and grins, flipping her welding mask back down over face.

* * *

The more time Gil spends around the apartment, the less it feels like he’s living inside a contested border. Instead, it just starts to feel like he’s living on land in the throes of invasion; Tarvek starts spending time in the living room _conspicuously_. It’s like the thing with the post it notes, like he’s trying to make it clear to Gil that none of this space is his, because Tarvek got here first.

Which is both patently absurd, and actually very much like something Tarvek would do, which means things very quickly escalate into a silent war of attrition.

Tarvek sets up camp on the couch with a stack of reading and his headphones. Gil retaliates by cooking infinitely more food than he can eat, and storing it all in the fridge, with aggressive amounts of sticky notes on the leftovers. Tarvek starts playing opera in his room with the door open, at high volume, and then goes to shower after leaving Gil to suffer the high-pitched arias of Tarvek’s favorite sopranos. Gil hides all of his rainboots.

It’s actually the most alive Gil’s felt in awhile, and it probably shouldn’t give him such a rush, but whatever. He can take a page out of Bang’s book, for once, and be petty because it feels good.

Plus, the sound that Tarvek makes when he opens the freezer to find it filled entirely with hotpockets is something Gil’s going to treasure for the rest of his life.

Gil was all ready to go on feeling _sorry_ for him, but if Tarvek wants to be an asshole, Gil’s certainly not going to stop him.

* * *

For midterms, Dr. Vapnoople assigns everyone research on different animal skeleton structures. Which sounds entirely reasonable until it comes out that they’re all going to have to go out and find their own samples. Which means _entire skeletal structures_ have to be sourced. And no, the good doctor explains, with a truly evil grin on his face, asking a local museum for help is not going to count.

In principle, Gil gets the idea. Biological research is not a safe and happy field. Most of the time, it’s not anywhere close to reasonable, sane, or sanitary. In his own way, Dr. Vapnoople is giving them their trial by fire; if they can’t handle sourcing a few skeletons, then they’re probably not cut out for this line of work, and that’s the sort of thing that someone would want to figure out _before_ they finish their master’s degree.

It’s still going to be a pain in the ass, and Gil tells Bang as much when she comes to help Gil eat his entire stash of attrition hotpockets. The freezer stopped working this morning, and Gil’s 90% sure it’s because Tarvek _did something to it_ , but since Gil can’t prove anything, he’s stuck having to get rid of all the hotpockets before they get weird.

“Why not just source your own stiffs?” Bang asks him.

Gil rolls his eyes. “I mean, yeah, I’m going to _have_ to—”

Bang shakes her head, and throws a hotpocket at him. “No,” she says, “I mean, like, you’ve got deer, right?”

 _“Cervidae,”_ Gil corrects her.

“Is that fancy for deer?” Bang asks, raising an eyebrow at Gil.

“Yeah,” Gil relents.

“Alright, cool. You’ve got deer. And you need a skeleton, right? So,” Bang asks him, “you ever heard about melting bodies in quicklime?”

“That doesn’t actually work,” Gil says automatically, and then frowns as his brain catches up with itself. “Wait—”

Bang grins. “Yup. There are highways around here, and forests. Way I see it, all you have to do is just, _drive around_ until you find what you’re looking for.”

Gil’s silent for a moment, thinking it over, eating his hotpocket.

 _“Huh,”_ he says eventually, and Bang beams smugly.

“I’m a genius,” she says. “Your dad should give me a fucking job. Like, a real one, not just the under the table stuff with the smuggling,” Bang brightens up at a sudden thought. “Hey, I could teach people how to do all sorts of stuff! Like, real-life skills! Like lockpicking! And how to make a shank!”

Gil snorts. “You keep saying ‘smuggling’ like he’s got you doing anything scarier than getting heavy metals through customs.”

Bang shrugs. “It’s all in the perception. View your job how you want to view it, and you can tell yourself you’re doing what you’ve wanted to do all along,” she says philosophically, and shoves the rest of her hotpocket into her mouth.

* * *

Gil probably shouldn’t have eaten all those hotpockets, even if it _was_ out of spite. He can’t sleep that night, gastrointestinal distress making itself known as the natural consequence of an entire freezer’s worth of food that comes out of a cardboard box. Gil ends up pacing back and forth for most of the night past the door Tarvek left cracked open, which at least gives him time to read over his lecture notes.

What it does mean, however, is that Gil’s perfectly awake when Tarvek isn’t.

Around three in the morning, Gil first hears it; if the rain outside were any louder, Gil wouldn’t have heard it at all. But there it is, very faint, and more familiar than he would like to admit, the sounds of Tarvek having a nightmare.

For a moment, Gil stands outside his roommate’s door, and leans his head on the wall next to the door, _listening_ , hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

 _Guilt_ has always been his problem. The need to fix things. Colette used to lecture him about it, but now she’s still in Paris and Gil’s the one faced with his past and the things he doesn’t have a way to solve. People aren’t _puzzles_ , no matter how Gil’s father tends to play with lives. There isn’t a force that Gil can apply that’ll untangle the knot his family’s always been, that will make Agatha’s birth parents anything other than assholes, or Tarvek’s, for that matter.

But that doesn’t stop Gil from _standing there_ , angry, enraged at life and circumstances and _everything_ , angrier than Gil’s managed to be about anything in a long time.

By the time Gil finally starts to fall asleep, the sun is rising, but the storm is still here, pelting down even harder than before. He hears Tarvek start bumping around, and decides to stay in bed, and catch his time where he can find it.

* * *

“Hey, do you have a car?” Gil asks Agatha the next time they meet up.

“No,” Agatha says. “Why?”

Gil frowns. “I’ve got a project,” he explains. “It’s not huge, I just need the assist.”

“What for?” Agatha asks him.

“I have to go roadkill hunting,” Gil explains sheepishly, already cringing on the inside.

“Okay,” Agatha says slowly, “why?”

Gil blinks. “Dr. Vapnoople’s seminar,” he says. “He’s got us sourcing skeletal structures, and I have to bring him something from the _Cervidae_ family.

“So, roadkill,” Agatha says.

Gil nods. “Yeah. I was going to melt it down, get the meat off the bones and then present that.”

“Well, good luck,” Agatha says. “That actually sounds kind of cool.”

Gil smiles. “Yeah, right? Or at least, I think it’s going to be once it’s over. The early stages are just going to be a lot of blood and work.”

Agatha shrugs. “Most things are.”

* * *

“Hey,” Gil starts the call to Bang, “so remember when you said the other day that you ‘knew where the bodies were buried’—”

“Aw, junior, that’s sweet,” Bang coos. “Inviting me to baby’s first murder cleanup—”

Gil rolls his eyes, and hopes that Bang can hear it through the phone. Judging by the way she cackles, she just might. “No, you creep,” Gil tells her, “I was looking for help with the deer project. Looks like you’re the only person I know who has a car in town that isn’t my father.”

“Depressing,” Bang says succinctly, which, really, Gil can’t actually disagree with. “Anyway,” Bang continues, “I’m not in country, right now. Deathwish called with a something something he needed taken care of, and I can’t really talk about it.”

“But you were just here _two days ago_!”

“I know!” She says. “It’s totally unreasonable. But that’s family. When they need you, you show up. Or something. What about Prince How Dare You?” Bang offers.

Gil blinks. _“Tarvek?”_

“Got it in one.”

“You’re kidding,” Gil says flatly. Pauses. “How do you even know he has a car?”

“Do you really want an answer to that question?” Bang asks him. “Or would you rather have plausible deniability?”

Gil pinches the bridge of his nose. “Don’t tell me,” he says.

“Yeah,” Bang says, “that was probably the correct answer. Anyway, I’ll call you back in a few days once I’ve got everything here wrapped up. Have fun finding a body and looting it for its worldly possessions!”

* * *

“So,” Gil asks Tarvek one afternoon, walking into the kitchen while Tarvek cooks something that might be pasta, “how would you like to help me find a body?”

Very carefully, Tarvek turns the burner on the stove off. He wipes his hands on the rag hanging over the oven handle, and turns to face Gil. “What,” he says, and Gil thinks: this is their second conversation as roommates.

“How would you like,” Gil repeats patiently, “to help me find a body?”

Tarvek takes his glasses off, and kneads in between his eyes with the heel of his spare hand. “What the actual fuck,” he says, and Gil can’t help grinning.

“Not a human body,” Gil clarifies.

“How the _living hell_ have you gotten _more_ degenerate since Paris?” Tarvek asks.

“Practice?” Gil offers.

Tarvek sighs. “Explain. I’m going to be plagued by curiosity if you don’t.”

“Vapnoople assigned the graduate seminar a project that requires us to all source different skeletal structures,” Gil explains quickly. “I got _Cervidae_ , so I was figuring I’d go up and down the highway until I found some decently intact roadkill. Only problem is, I don’t know anyone who owns a car.”

“You _live here_ ,” Tarvek says. “How the hell do you not know anyone who owns a car?”

“Other than my father,” Gil adds, and Tarvek frowns.

“That’s depressing,” he says, and Gil nods, because, well.

“So, you want to help?” Gil asks.

For a second, Tarvek thinks about it. Gil can practically see the gears turning in his head. It occurs to him, suddenly, that Tarvek very well could leave Gil out to dry. He _did_ say that his father owns a car; Tarvek could justify, with ease, not helping Gil out of pettiness, or revenge, or—

“When do you need this done by?” Tarvek asks, and internally, the little kid Gil used to be crows.

“Ideally by the afternoon on Saturday. I won’t have any classes, and I don’t think you do, either.”

“I don’t,” Tarvek agrees. “And Saturday can work, we just need to get done before five. I’ve got a thing to go to for an honors fraternity—”

“They let graduate students into fraternities?” Gil asks.

Tarvek flushes. “I’m still an undergrad,” he says, and Gil thinks, for a minute, about the headlines, and the way Tarvek left Paris—

“You still doing a triple major?” Gil asks.

“Yes,” Tarvek says. “Still Philosophy, Political Science, and Mechanical Engineering.”

“I _still_ think that workload’s going to kill you,” Gil tells him.

Tarvek shrugs. “I handled it before.”

After that, things lapse into silence. But for the first time (in a very, _very_ long time) it doesn’t feel so oppressive.

* * *

Tarvek grabs Gil on Saturday around noon, already dressed in nice clothing. Not that Gil’s seen Tarvek wear anything other than dress shirts and vests since they moved in, but this is still, somehow, nicer. Gil, because he likes to think he has realistic expectations about how all of this is going to go, is wearing a hoodie and some sweatpants.

“You know if this goes right, you’re going to help me carry a body,” Gil reminds him.

“I have a tarp,” Tarvek says blandly.

* * *

Tarvek’s car is used. He’s not sure why that detail is throwing him. Tarvek’s got a rolled up plastic tarp in the trunk of the car, which should probably be more worrying than it is. Years of friendship with Bang has mostly inured Gil to the gray areas of the law, and then again, there are perfectly mundane reasons to own a tarp.

The ride up and down the highway is long, and mostly silent. Tarvek plays opera through the aux cord, and Gil tries not to fidget. Frankly, it’s awkward, but it’s— speaking honestly, it’s not anything near as bad as sharing a car with his father was, and what the hell does _that_ say about Gil’s life.

Rain beads on the windshield, and the wipers on Tarvek’s boxy-looking car make it clear again, at least for a few seconds until the weather makes itself known again. The operas cycle through what sounds like pretty much all of Wagner, and occasionally Gil catches Tarvek’s fingers twitching on the wheel on what he comes to realize is _conducting_.

Eventually, they find what they’re looking for. They get out of the car, and walk into the rain.

The deer lies on the side of the road, a giant red stag with a ten point crown. There’s a little blood, the light rain diluting it on the pavement. It barely looks hurt, except for the fact that it’s lying on its side, its antlers tilting its neck to an angle that would be painful were the stag still alive.

“Right,” Tarvek says briskly, and there’s something cold and ancient in his eyes when he says it, stepping forward with the tarp.

For a second, Gil just stands there, the rain misting over the highway in strange ephemeral sheets, staring as Tarvek bends down and spreads the tarp out.

“Are you going to help or not?” Tarvek asks him, still crouched, looking over his shoulder at Gil even as he rolls up his sleeves.

“Yeah,” Gil says, and rolls up his sleeves, too.

* * *

The ride to the lab is a bit fraught. Tarvek speeds, which Gil wouldn’t have expected, but somehow doesn’t surprise him. Tarvek always seemed so prim and so proper; he was still readier to get his hands dirty than Gil was, when it came down to it.

Silence fills the car, and, unfortunately, so does the faint scent of the rain, and of blood, like they brought the storm in with them when they hauled in the body. Lugging the deer off the ground wasn’t hard; Tarvek and Gil are both strong, and wrapping the deer in the plastic sheeting wasn’t that much harder, just awkward as they tried to maneuver around the tines of its antlers.

Tarvek keeps glancing at the clock. It’s 4:17, now, and Gil remembers that Tarvek’s supposed to be at that thing by five. Which might not have been a problem before the two of them got covered in the deer’s blood.

Gil’s honestly surprised that Tarvek hasn’t started bitching about the upholstery on the car. Maybe he hasn’t noticed, yet.

Gil keeps trying to think of something to say, but all he can think of is the cold, dead thing inside Tarvek that looks out from his eyes, sometimes, that was there nearly the whole time Gil knew him in Paris, and hardly ever dared to show itself when they were children. Gil looked the story up— he _knows_ , sort of, (as much as the papers could’ve explained) what happened. But he wants to hear it from Tarvek’s mouth, even though, realistically, it’s not like Gil’s _entitled_ to the knowledge, or anything.

It’s just— he still wants to _know_. As if knowing would change anything.

When they pull up to the lab building, Gil hops out of the car, and jogs up to the door. Which—

Which turns out to be locked.

“Fuck,” Tarvek says, and that about sums it up.

* * *

“Let me call my contact,” Tarvek says, once they’re back in the car.

“Your _contact_?” Gil repeats. “What are you, a spy?”

Tarvek rolls his eyes at Gil. “I know somebody who works in the building. Just let me call them.”

Tarvek calls. It rings through.

“Fuck,” Gil says.

Tarvek sighs.

* * *

“Okay,” Gil says briskly, “step two, take two.”

“You actually have a backup plan?” Tarvek asks.

Gil shrugs. “I’m good at improvising.”

Tarvek snorts.

Gil’s backup plan turns out to be the ditch behind the campus, so maybe the snort was warranted. Just a little.

“The hell is this?” Tarvek asks.

“Jogging path,” Gil explains. “Used to play around here a lot with my sister when we were kids.”

“That does _not_ explain why we’re here.”

“When you want to hide a body,” Gil starts, and trails off.

Tarvek looks at him like he’s crazy.

Gil walks over to the car, and opens the trunk. “You going to help or not?” Gil asks him. Tarvek rubs in between his eyes again.

“I sent my friend a text,” Tarvek says, even as he walks over to Gil. “She can’t get the building open for us until tomorrow, since she doesn’t actually have access to any of the keys.”

“She?” Gil asks.

Tarvek nods shallowly. “A friend of mine,” he reiterates. “She’s—” he spreads his hands. “She doesn’t give a _shit_ who I am,” he says, and there’s wonder in there that makes Gil ache.

“What’s her name?” Gil asks.

“Agatha,” Tarvek says, and Gil shakes his head.

“What?” Tarvek asks.

“Nothing,” Gil says. “I just— that’s why I like her, too.”

* * *

They put the body in the ravine. The deer gets lowered into a ditch behind some bushes, its antlers still craning its neck to angle that would be uncomfortable were it alive.

As they cover it up with debris, Gil hears footsteps, under the rain. He looks up, and turns. There’s a jogger coming down the path. As Tarvek stands up, the jogger gets closer, sees them, and slows down.

Then, he must see them clearly, or more likely, see that they’re covered in blood and trying to hide something large in a tarp behind some debris, and he starts running faster.

Gil watches the jogger go, and turns to Tarvek, who looks at him.

A laugh works its way out of Gil. Once he starts, he can’t stop, and Tarvek joins in, the two of them stumbling helplessly to the car, staggering inside.

“He’s—” Gil wheezes, “he’s going to call the police.”

“And the cops are going to find a _deer—”_ Tarvek adds, head in his bloody, rain-stained hands. “Holy shit, you really _are_ going to get me expelled twice.”

Gil shakes his head. “No, I’m not. I don’t think he even saw you. Hell, the cops in this town are lazy. Ten bucks says no one even investigates.”

Tarvek looks up at him. “You think—” he takes a breath, “you think that the cops are so lazy they’d ignore a call in about a body?”

Gil shrugs. “Last year, on Halloween weekend, there was a house party that they broke up, and 1,000 people spilled out of the house and started a small riot. After that, the cops stopped responding to noise complaints, for the most part. Being a cop in a college town is weird.”

Tarvek puts his head back in his hands. “Do you know,” he asks, “how much this explains about you, as a person?”

* * *

The next morning, Gil and Tarvek go back to the ravine, after the rain stops.

The stag is still there.

Gil knocks into Tarvek deliberately, shaking him off balance. “See?” He asks. “What’d I tell you?”

“That’s horrifying,” Tarvek says. “Actually horrifying. We could’ve killed a real person, and no one would have cared.”

“I missed my meeting,” Tarvek adds after a beat.

“I’m sorry,” Gil tells him.

“It’s fine,” Tarvek says. “They were really after me for my money. Or, my family’s money. As if there was really that much left.”

“Want to help me move a body?” Gil asks, and this time Tarvek shoves him.

* * *

Agatha’s waiting at the lab when they show up.

“I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” she comments.

Gil looks at Tarvek out of the corner of his eye. “I have blackmail material,” Tarvek says.

“We’re roommates,” Gil explains.

“Huh,” Agatha says, but doesn’t comment further, just opens the building and leads them over to lab six.

Everything is still and quiet, this early in the morning. After the storm broke last night, everything is covered in mist and dew, the sun starting to break through outside the windows.

The lab smells like antiseptic, and frankly looks kind of like a mess, which makes it very much like every other college lab Gil’s ever been in, but this one is _Gil’s_ , at least for three hours on Wednesday, and seven more hours every week whenever he can catch them. Gil likes lab six. There’s a poster of a cat hanging off a branch by the centrifuge, and Gil can appreciate its message, most of the time.

Hang in there. It’s going to be okay, even if it’s not good.

“Okay,” Gil says, and claps his hands together. “Time to melt down a deer carcass.”

He turns to the others. Agatha’s sitting up on a table, and Tarvek’s standing next to the wall, almost like he wants to slouch, but can’t quite bring himself to.

“Who wants to help?” Gil asks, and Agatha smiles, and hops off the table.

“Biology’s pretty disgusting,” she says. “I’m in.”

Behind her, Tarvek snorts, shakes his head. But he walks over, and neatly sidesteps the aforementioned carcass that’s currently sitting on the floor, still wrapped in its tarp. “Sure,” he says, “why not.”

* * *

The three of them get brunch, after, at Agatha’s suggestion. Gil knows a place nearby that has _really_ good waffles, and it’s practically a school institution.

“I can’t believe neither of you have heard of it,” Gil complains.

Tarvek shrugs. “I’ve only been here since the semester started.”

Agatha shrugs. “Same.”

Gil scowls into his plate. “That’s a tragedy,” he says.

Agatha tells them about a movie she saw last week. Tarvek complains about some asshat in his philosophy lecture who is, apparently, flagrantly wrong. Gil talks about his students. They eat waffles, and outside, it doesn’t rain, and the sun does its damndest to shine.

It’s a good morning. It’s good.

* * *

Colette calls a few weeks later.

“Hey,” she says, “so I subscribed to the PE newspaper online—”

“Oh god,” Gil says. “You know that thing’s trash, right? Like it’s the least reputable thing on campus— my dad subsidizes them to print nice things about the college—”

“—and there was something in the papers about Satanism, was that you?” Colette continues.

“What?”

“Yeah, some student said he had proof of Satanic sacrifice and animal worship, which, honestly, sounds like the kind of fucked up thing you’d get involved in by accident—”

“Can you send me a link to the article?” Gil asks, and wheezes out a laugh.

“Okay, see, that makes me think it _was_ you—”

“It was me,” Gil admits. “Me and Tarvek.”

 _“Sturmvoraus?”_ Colette asks, shocked.

“We’re roommates now,” Gil says serenely. “He likes Wagner.”

Gil prints the article at the library, and tapes it to the fridge. A few days later, Gil comes home and finds out Tarvek found a print copy, and had it framed. It looks good next to the skull and its antlers.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings include: Animal Death - Tarvek and Gil go looking for (and find) a deer that's been killed in a collision with a car in order to use its bones for Science; Child Abuse - Tarvek's parents win no awards, in any universe, ever. Neither does Lucrezia. Klaus takes home the honorable mention in the bad parents' prize for being terrifyingly controlling and neglectfully distant at the same time; Depression - as the background radiation to this fic. Gil doesn't really ever sit down and go 'ah yes, I am depressed,' but it's there.
> 
> So, fun fact: remember when I said everything collegiate that I write is inevitably about Rutgers? This is a fictionalized version of the best college story I’ve ever heard, which just so happens to have gone down at Rutgers in the 80s. Maybe someday, I'll use some other Rutgers story I've been told to write more fanfiction. It's certainly bizarre enough here, and we have enough mad scientists on campus to make it worth it.
> 
> True events that I've either heard or experienced that were used in this story:  
> \- Tarvek's post it notes  
> \- The house party Gil mentions  
> \- The entirety of the deer debacle, down to the report in the newspaper, and the roommate in fancy clothes who had somewhere to be. This is also the story that I was told by the person who needed to get the deer, nearly 20 years after it had happened. The other two appropriated stories are modern.
> 
> And, in keeping with this being a story related to me nearly eight years ago by one of the culprits, I have no idea if the 'science' (as barely as I've described it) is even accurate. So, here you go. I hope you like your present, ZJT.


End file.
